some unknown point in the past.
Doctors couldn’t pinpoint the cause. They blamed it on stress and her weight.
At the time, Dawn weighed 465 pounds.
She had never been thin. By her senior year of high school, she carried 180 pounds on her 5-foot-7 frame.
“In the Black community, bigger is better,” she says. “It’s instilled in us. The bigger the woman is, the better she can sing. The better she can cook. It’s a thing that’s hard to resist.”
When she was 26, Dawn gave birth to Izzy and raised her as a single mom. That started her path of eating for comfort. Her habit worsened when her mother, who had heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, died at 56. Her father had some similar issues and died when he was 57.
Although Dawn was never diagnosed with diabetes, she was on two blood pressure medications by the time she was 40.
Meanwhile, her job was stressful. She’d worked in ER scheduling and bed assignments and had assisted hospital case managers and social workers.
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And even though the smallest amount of walking wore her out, Dawn felt the need to hide it all. What little energy remained she put into looking “put together and stylish.”
Following the stroke, Dawn felt like everything had caught up to her. She also endured another blow: Grandma died while Dawn was still in the hospital. She missed the funeral.
The stroke left Dawn with few deficits – and new priorities. She didn’t want her daughter to